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One of the less-profitable genres Dreamworks has also recently bought into is Woody Allen, who’s a category of his own. Whether or not you think that’s a smart thing is subjective, like humor in general. But actors sure seem to like him, since they line up to appear in his films for a far smaller paycheck than what they usually get, allowing Allen to keep budgets down. Dreamworks’ Jeffrey Katzenberg (the “K” in SKG) says of this, the first Allen movie they’ve released, “It's not as though we're counting on 30 or 40 million. If it goes into double digits, it'll be a success.''
Must be nice. Everybody else in Hollywood starts gargling Drano if their movie doesn’t make $50 million the first weekend, and here’s a guy who can afford to play around with whatever idea comes into his head just because he’s respected. With Small Time Crooks he writes, directs, and stars in something like what was once a matinee staple, the screwball heist comedy (as was his first original film, 1969’s Take the Money and Run, which could almost be a prequel). Allen plays Ray Winkler, a rather dense, semi-reformed con with self-delusions of grandeur. Backed by former inmates Tommy (Tony Darrow), Denny (Michael Rapaport), and Benny (Jon Lovitz), and his longsuffering ex-stripper wife Frenchy (Tracey Ullman), he concocts a scheme to open a little bakery whose operation will mask tunneling into a bank two doors down. The robbery doesn’t work out, but Frenchy’s cookies prove to be so popular that the crew gets rich anyway selling franchises, and they all drop into New York’s haute couture with an unceremonious thud documented in a hilarious “60 Minutes” profiling by Steve Kroft. To ease the transition, Ray and Frenchy hire a smooth art dealer (Hugh Grant) to give them a crash course in etiquette; think, “Pretentiousness for Dummies.”
It’s slow-starting, even for a Woody movie, but things pick up after a long opening round of rather tepid jokes, about the time Lovitz’s character shows up. Tracey Ullman is okay, if a little one-dimensional, and Woody is…well, Woody, leaving comedic icon Elaine May to largely carry the film as Frenchy’s sweetly dimwitted cousin. A former Second City member, and long-time collaborator with actor/comedian/writer/director Mike Nichols (together they were once called “the world’s fastest humans”), she quietly steals all her scenes despite not having acted on film since 1990 (she also hasn’t directed anything since the disastrous Ishtar in 1987, although continuing to have screenwriting success with the Nichols-directed The Birdcage and Primary Colors.)
This could be a latter-day incarnation of a lesser Marx Brothers movie, featuring Allen as recently discovered sibling Kvetcho. B-
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